Baraa’h Qandeel
Baraa’h Qandeel is a 26-year-old writer, poet, translator, and a professional in digital marketing and business development.
Her family is from Deir al Balah, but were displaced during the genocide, including to Rafah in the south of the Strip. During this time of attack, her best friend was also martyred.
She is one of the 16 emerging literary translators accepted to ArabLit’s Summer 2025 Gaza Literary Translation Workshop, supported by Palestine Writes, and she has been featured on their website multiple times. Previously, Baraa’ah wrote for We Are Not Numbers.
"I believe that my ultimate goal is to reach my freedom and to fully embrace it in this journey of life, whereas every other goal is just a phase in the process. I also believe that in order to be free you have to embrace a message to deliver to the world and a voice for this message to be heard, so writing is the perfect medium.
Writing for me isn't only a mean of communication or just a hobby; it's my way of expressing myself to the world, and a way of liberating myself from shackles that might restrict my mind, heart and soul. I believe writing has this distinct ability to grant you a tongue and a voice to speak for yourself in your own unique style and notify the world that here you are, existing in this universe, and you are not voiceless anymore."
Writing has not been easy. When asked about how her process has been affected, she said:
“I’ve wanted to use my emotion, to channel my emotion into a helpful cause. A poem, or a piece that I can give to the world as a solace or to capture what is happening here. But no matter what I write, I feel words cannot do justice to the horrific acts of violence I have witnessed…
There were months when I felt so helpless and speechless that I couldn’t write even one word. And other times where I would pour words onto paper and aggressively write poems.”
Currently, Baraa’ah is fundraising for survival and to try to evacuate for graduate school in Malaysia to get her Master’s degree. She has already been accepted at one of the top universities in the country, the International Islamic University of Malaysia (IIUM), but she needs the funds to go.
You can also listen to recent interview with Baraa’h:
Palcast podcast - October 2025
LISTEN (38 min)
Read writing from Baraa’h
They took my sky away
What's the point of having wings when all the air is stolen?
They are still there over my head.
Buzzing, hovering, spreading death
It wasn’t enough that they took the land.
Now they are conquering my sky.
My dearest sky is full of fear.
full of bombs and agony.
The same sky I used to stare at
is now the one I’m afraid to recognize.
They took my sky and left me
shaking, trembling and anxious.
How will I be safe now?
How will I be free?
What’s the point of having wings,
when all the air is stolen.
and this vast blue space
is no longer ours; it is no longer mine.
It all started
on one of the darkest nights.
They slayed the moon
and then took the sun.
They used the blood
to make the sky red.
That’s their favorite color.
That’s how it’s preferred.
Now my wings will wither
and slowly crumble into ashes.
I am not a phoenix.
For now, I’ve lost my purpose.
The air is heavy.
It is no longer my place to stay.
I want to be hopeful.
But how shall I ever be so?
This isn’t a story of hope.
It is just another tragedy.
Because they took my light away.
They took my joy away.
They took my sky and with it,
my soul just faded away.
Separated from each other and the world
(written in 2021, before the 2023 Gaza genocide)
Traveling has always been a luxury for my generation, a fantasy we can only imagine and dream about. Well, forget about traveling. Even visiting other regions in our own country is difficult as hell. If you want me to give you an example, then let me tell you that we are forced to communicate with our own people through digital screens only, no actual eye contact, no real gatherings, just virtual ones.
The suffering doesn’t end here. To make things just worse, not only are people in Gaza City paralyzed and forbidden to move about in their own town, but more Palestinians outside Palestine are stuck on the outside, and just paying a visit to their families is a risk in and of itself. It is like a curse that accompanies you from birth; when you’re Palestinian, suffering becomes a lifestyle for you, and it’s twice as bad if you are from Gaza.
When I was growing up, I was always familiar with the idea that Gaza used to have an airport in Rafah (the city that borders Egypt). Then one day, Israeli forces decided that we didn’t need to have an airport of our own anymore, and that we should stay in the big prison they have created for us, so they simply bombed the entire place and smashed it into pieces. They were clearly declaring, “If we can’t occupy Gaza and add another piece of land to our collection, then we should transform this little, tiny place into a cage with thousands of prisoners in it and deprive them of their right to choose their own destiny.”
I have an aunt who lives in Egypt with her husband and their children, and I barely remember what she looks like. Of course, that would be expected because the last time I saw her was when I was 10, and I’m 22 now! It was even more tragic when my grandma passed away where she lived, in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. My aunt couldn’t even say goodbye to the mother she had always missed or look at her beautiful face for the last time. She risked her life to illegally travel from Egypt to Gaza, but she couldn’t come before the third day of the funeral (Islamic funerals last for three days), and she didn’t even have enough time to spend with her sisters (she is the oldest) because, her presence being illegal, she had to return to Egypt as soon as she could.
I have heard many stories from people I know, and about people I don’t know, who were poorly and inhumanely treated at the Rafah border as they were heading either to or from Gaza. Normally, the journey takes four or more days to reach one of the two destinations, but if you pay extra money — that is difficult enough to get — you can get the VIP treatment to reach your destination in a day and a half.
I may sound sarcastic — and I am not sure if it is the healthiest way to express my thoughts — but sarcasm helps me absorb the painful fact that as Gazans, we are not able to travel and move freely as people of many other nationalities can.
Discover more Gaza writers & artists
Follow the links below to see a list of other creative individuals in the Strip to support and amplify.